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Sister, can you spare $12,000 to help me decarbonize my home?

New user-installable appliances coming to market are making it easier to decarbonize a home. But some are still in the works — and none are particularly cheap.

I saw an induction stove, a window-mounted heat pump, a battery back-up system and a few other promising appliances — these are user installable, work with standard 120V outlets and do their part in lowering a home’s carbon footprint. Well, I didn’t do it — it took many months of the solar company filing permits on my behalf and two days of skilled technicians crawling all over my roof and installing complicated-looking boxes and tubes on the side of my house to get it done. The dual-unit, Complete Backup configuration costs $3,000, but currently qualifies for a 30 percent tax credit due to its watt-hour size and the fact that you mount it on the wall (but I don’t think anyone is counting on that perk to still be a thing for long).

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